


sound the bells

by cryptidgay



Series: things you said / blaseball prompt fics [3]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Incineration, Season 07, Shelled Jess, Siblings, Tragedy, strained sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27970157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidgay/pseuds/cryptidgay
Summary: Leach Herman, from the other sofa, as the TV drones on about the birds and the shell and the league’s star: “You gonna call her?”Sebastian’s still blinking at Jess’ face on the TV. Takes a moment to process Herman’s words, and another to process that they’re said to him. “I don’t know,” he says.(Or: the Telephone twins, and things unsaid.)
Relationships: Jessica Telephone & Sebastian Telephone
Series: things you said / blaseball prompt fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046602
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	sound the bells

**Author's Note:**

> woohoo another prompt fic that got way too long! this one's "things you didn't say at all" + the telephone twins for [marquis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis)! originally posted on [my tumblr.](https://rogueumpire.tumblr.com/post/636998851423830016/5-for-the-telephone-siblings)
> 
> title from sound the bells by dessa.
> 
>  **content warnings:** strained sibling relationships, offscreen character death, the identity issues that come with being an alternate.

“Seb, you’re gonna wanna see this.”

It’s not a sentence that’s ever preceded anything good, in Sebastian’s experience, and there’s a small, petty part of him that wants to turn his back out of spite, say _I will not look,_ walk out of the locker room and go home. _His_ Steaks, the ones he was with three years ago, pointed at the decree results and said the same thing, moments before he was ripped between realities — and now, when these Steaks say _Seb,_ he knows they aren’t talking to him but to the ghost of the Sebastian he replaced.

It gives him a headache if he thinks about it too much, makes something swirling-sick spark up in his gut. If he doesn’t think about it, it’s like he’s forgetting the world he left behind. There’s no good options, no happy medium, just static droning on and on under darkened skies.

August’s still staring at him, so he fights the urge to run away back with a stick and looks where she’s pointing. The TV mounted on the wall. It’s tuned to the splorts network, tuned to —

Canada. Moist Talkers versus Pies; their game of the day offset from the Steaks’, still going on an hour after the Steaks’ game had come to an end. He thinks August’s pulling a prank until the view switches to a shaky-cam close-up on a murder of crows so thick he can’t see past them, until they part, until out from the swarm steps his sister. She limps to the dugout, leaving the peanut shell in pieces on the field behind her — and despite the shakiness of her steps, she grins a movie-star grin directly into the nearest camera.

Sebastian feels sick.

***

It isn’t that he’s not happy for Jessica.

Sebastian imagines it isn’t fun to be trapped in a shell. Sebastian imagines it’s a little like being trapped in a shadow — not _the_ shadows, like Townsend, but constantly ignored in favor of a sister or a god. Same thing, when it comes down to it.

Maybe that’s an unfair thing to think. Maybe comparing Jess to the god that trapped her there is cruel; maybe comparing himself to her is self-serving at best; maybe it doesn’t matter. The Steaks seemed shocked, when he appeared, that he didn’t fawn over his sister’s every move. Jess seemed shocked, too. Sebastian feels a little bad for whatever former version of himself was here — a version who didn’t seem to want anything more than being the _second of two,_ the lesser Telephone twin.

He’s a little jealous, too. From the stories he’s heard, it seems like this version of himself and his sister were much closer; maybe he genuinely hadn’t minded being in her shadow, maybe he’d celebrated her. Maybe they hadn’t traded jabs every time they were on the field together and meant most of the awful things they said about each other. Maybe they’d actually loved each other; didn’t just say they did.

Sebastian — _this_ Sebastian, the only one who’s here, the one who can’t stop thinking about how he’s _not the right version of himself_ and _not the right Telephone_ and his stats might be better than the old one but _clearly_ that doesn’t actually matter to anyone else — hadn’t spoken to his Jessica in years, when he disappeared. When he was replaced with the other one, he can only assume.

He’d always kind of wondered what it would be like to have a sister he was friends with. They’d fought too much for that to ever be more than an idle daydream, one he would shake himself out of quickly — there was no use in it, even if it would be nice.

(Maybe he’s more than a little jealous.)

But — but — but. But here’s it’s in reach. Here Jess smiles at him when they pass each other on the field, even if it is always a little grief-tinged. He hasn’t been rude to her, but he also hasn’t been kind. He doesn’t call.

And when she’d been shelled, the Steaks had given him condolences like he was the Sebastian they used to know, even knowing he wasn’t. He’d been — not _sad,_ not really, but something more complicated than that. The bitter joy of being the only Telephone mixed with the regret — his chance to reach out taken, too late, not enough, _gone._ She’d tried calling him a few times, back in season five, and he’d stopped answering the phone, let it ring once and hit _end call,_ not even giving the illusion that he’d just _missed it_ and would call back later — and maybe that was cruel, maybe that was just leftover animosity towards his Jessica, maybe he should have been kinder.

He’d assumed she wouldn’t be coming out of the shell, or that she would be someone else, when she did. The gods don’t do anything without consequence attached.

He hadn’t expected to feel grief at the thought.

Now that she’s back — and with a two-run homer on her first at-bat; he tries to steer his reaction more towards _good job, Jess,_ away from _showoff_ — all those swirled-together emotions make a model volcano somewhere in his gut, threatening to blow.

Sebastian fights back the urge to run, sits himself on one of the sofas in the stadium’s den and watches the game play out. The Steaks give him distance. He tugs at a loose thread on his jersey until there’s a hole in it; he’ll have to get Conner to help him sew it back together before the next game, but he keeps worrying at it anyways, because the harm is already done and he might as well. Jess hits a two-run homer and takes the Pies from losing to victory, and smiles even as she looks like she’s about to collapse.

Leach Herman, from the other sofa, as the TV drones on about the birds and the shell and the league’s star: “You gonna call her?”

Sebastian’s still blinking at Jess’ face on the TV. Takes a moment to process Herman’s words, and another to process that they’re said to him. “I don’t know,” he says.

The rest of the Steaks leave quickly. Game’s over; the excitement of an unshelling has calmed; the Garages’ game is over for the day, too, so no risk of beaning-related news filtering in. Home game means they can all _go home._ Sebastian still doesn’t know how to feel at home here, so he spends most of his time in the stadium; plays games on the den’s TVs when the rest of the team has filtered out, or reads the comics Greenlemon leaves scattered across the common areas.

Leach is an alternate twice-over, so she gets it more than most. Sometimes she sticks around. They tell each other about the places they came from.

(Her home sounds like a nightmare, and as such, she’s adjusted far better than he has to this new world. His wasn’t _ideal,_ but he was happy there. He knew where he stood, there.)

“Far be it from me to tell you what to do,” she says, which means she’s about to tell him what to do. It’s hard to read her expression, but from the tilt of her head, she’s deep in thought for a moment before continuing. “But I saw you when she was shelled. That first moment, realizing what it meant, that she might be gone — I’ve lost a lot of people, Sebastian. You almost lost her, and didn’t realize it would hurt until it was done.”

“Wow,” Sebastian says. “Jesus, Leach. Are you a mind-reader or something?”

“Only sometimes,” she says, which, ominous. “You’re not very subtle, though. Your emotions show on your face.”

“Cool,” Sebastian says, half-sarcastic but too soft for it to come across.

“Think about it,” Leach says, standing up. “Her place on the idolboard has hardly shifted. It’s possible she’ll go back again at the end of this season.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sebastian says, and he means it.

***

The Steaks beat the Garages the next day, and the Pies win their own game in Charleston, and Sebastian hits the _call_ button before he gives himself time to second-guess.

“Seb?”

Jess’ voice sounds the same as he remembers, from both his world and the Jess who’d called him after he’d been swapped. Jess’ voice sounds mostly the same, but it’s hoarse, like she was screaming the whole two months she was trapped. He wonders if anyone outside the shell would’ve heard, if she had been, and feels a pang of awful guilt for the thought.

“Hi, Jess,” he says, and wills his voice to stay steady, and half-succeeds. “I, uh. I saw you were back? And I wanted to say — uh, congratulations, I guess?”

“You called,” she says, slowly.

“Yeah,” he says. “I called.”

“Thank you,” she says, and it’s almost diplomatic, like she’s weighing her words before saying them, which — really, he hasn’t given her much reason not to. Another pang of guilt. “But why? It’s been — it’s been a while.”

(Echoes of that first time she’d called him after he’d been swapped, and had acted as if they talked constantly, had said she was worried when he hadn’t called to fill her in on the election results. He doesn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but it was something like _Why are you calling me, Jess, you haven’t called me in five years._ He’d hung up on her, then. He wonders what would have changed if he hadn’t.)

“I don’t know, I was just — I was thinking, while you were in there? I didn’t think I’d get another chance to talk to you. And I might not be the Sebastian you grew up with, but — I was never close to the Jess I grew up with, and I thought, it would’ve been nice, if I’d taken the chance to get close to you, when you offered.” He’s rambling. He’s not giving himself enough air between words; he takes a shaky breath, continues. “And now you’re out, and I just… thought I should say hi.”

There’s a moment of silence long enough that he checks to make sure she hasn’t hung up. The background-static of the call still thrums somewhere at the back of his skull, and her name is still written in bold letters on the screen of his phone.

“Sorry, it was — I was in there a while, I don’t know if I remember how to talk to people,” Jess says. “Hi. It’s good to hear your voice, Seb.”

There’s so much warmth to that single sentence that it makes him want to cry.

Instead, he takes a deep breath, sinks further into the couch he’s settled himself on. “We’re playing the Pies next week,” he says. “Can we go for lunch before a game, or something?”

“Yeah,” she says immediately. “Yes, I’d like that.”

“Cool,” Seb says.

“You’re playing the Garages tomorrow,” Jess says. She says it like it means something, and he knows it does — because it’s not just the Garages, they played the Garages today and it was fine; it’s their undead pitcher, it’s the body count attached. “I caught myself up on everything that’s happened. Hotdogfingers. The debts.”

“Yeah, it’s been — it hasn’t been fun. She got Marco and Sam the second week, and — they’re alright, they survived, but a lot of people didn’t.”

“Be careful? Please. I can’t l—” and she cuts off, but he gets the gist. _Can’t lose him again._ Because it was a loss, for her, when he showed up and replaced the other-him. “Just be careful.”

“Always am,” he says. It’s a lie. A joke. She wonders if he knows enough about him to know that.

“I have to go practice,” she says. He can hear a smile in her voice, and he realizes very quickly that he’s never heard that tone from this Jess before. It’d been years, when he swapped, since he’d heard it from his own Jess. “But I’ll see you next week, alright? Day seventy-three. Just call me when you get to Philly.”

“Looking forward to it,” he says, and it’s the truth. “Bye, Jess.”

“Bye, Seb.”

***

The next day, Jaylen Hotdogfingers aims a fastball directly at Sebastian’s chest, knocks him flat on the ground. He has to take a long moment in the dirt to catch his breath. The umpire looks like they want to incinerate him just for taking that moment, for delaying play at all before he drags himself to the dugout, sits heavily next to Leach.

She does him the courtesy of not asking if he’s alright.

He isn’t. He saw Sam and Marco go through instability and come out unscathed and thought, foolishly, that it would be easy. They hadn’t seemed any different after being hit. They’d looked exactly the same; perhaps a little more wild-eyed, but the game _does that_ to people.

He looks down at his hand and it has smoke coming off of it already. The smoke before the fire. Events in the wrong direction, happening the wrong way.

“Do you see that?” he whispers to Leach. Holds his hand out in front of her.

“Your hand?” She tilts her head in what might be concern. “It’s the same as it was before.”

He yanks it back into his lap as if it’s been scalded by the words. He’s nervous enough without feeling burnt, even metaphorically.

He should call Jess after the game, he thinks. If something happens to him, she deserves to know beforehand. On the other hand — the video of three Steaks being struck by pitches won’t be plastered over every blaseball news website for the next twenty-four hours, and he _knows_ she checks those religiously, has every stat and every schedule memorized. He’s seen her mouthing her opponents’ stats to herself when the Steaks play the Pies; some of them are numbers he’s never heard of in metrics he can’t fathom, even though they must exist applied to him, somewhere. 

She’ll find out. He’d be surprised if she didn’t know already.

He thinks, in the infield, at the plate, on the bench, about the pros and cons of calling and not calling. Pros: he could talk to her again. The weather forecast is predicting another eclipse in the next few days, and he feels feverish under his skin, like the fire’s just waiting to engulf him. She cares in a way his Jess never did, has replaced all the distance that used to characterize the idea of _siblings_ in his mind with something else, and it’s taken him this long to even start to wrap his head around that.

She doesn’t want to lose him again. She’d been best friends with the other Sebastian.

And that leads him to the cons: it seems unbearably cruel to try to be her friend if he’s only going to die. If they won’t even be able to see each other in Philly, go out for lunch like he promised — the lack of closure might kill her, too. He thinks about the swirling storm of regrets he’d had when she’d been shelled, and thinks about the hopelessness of an incineration. No chance of being pecked free by birds.

He just has to survive the next week. Then he’ll call, and they’ll go out to lunch together. He can apologize for assuming she was the same as the Jess in his world, at first; he can apologize for pushing her away; he can apologize for not calling, as long as he survives.

When Jess calls him after the game, he lets it ring and ring. He does not listen to the voicemail she leaves.

***

Two days later, Sebastian Telephone is incinerated.

**Author's Note:**

> rest in violence seb :((
> 
> catch me on tumblr @ rogueumpire, where you can [send prompts for more blaseball fic](https://rogueumpire.tumblr.com/post/636801214589304832/send-me-a-ship-and-one-of-these-and-ill-write-a), or on twitter @ eviljaylen!


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